A to P

In Competition No. 2543 you were invited to submit a poem about the things people need to live on, in which the first letter of each line spells out the first 16 letters of the alphabet.
Martin Parker, self-confessed ‘crawler’, played the flattery card (he was not alone), which had no bearing whatsoever, of course, on his inclusion in the winners’ enclosure. His is a Betjeman-esque nostalgia for a now almost bygone era. It provides a nice counterpoint to Mike Morrison’s grim lament on what makes today’s world go around. He bags the extra fiver, while the other winners, printed below, net £25 each. Honourable mentions to Brian Murdoch, Basil Ransome-Davies and R.S. Gwynn.
Thanks to sharp-eyed Roger Brunskill, who has pointed out a case of gender reassignment — accidental or deliberate — that I failed to note in Alan Millard’s entry to last week’s competition. Mr Brunskill quite rightly points out that the horse in ‘Widdecombe Fair’ is a mare, and not a ‘he’ as Mr Millard has it.